.. but you won't see me fall apart
'Cause I've got an elastic heart

What did I do—

I'm sorry I'm sorry what did I do—

But it didn't matter. It didn't matter why he had been out on that late summer's day, or why he had cared enough to seek out the tattered, tired princess from the north. It didn't matter what words she had said to make him join up with their army. It didn't matter that all he'd done had been guard Kahlua and watch the battle with the bile rising in the back of his throat because it had been a graceless slaughter—

If they had been anything but the Edge—

If it had been the Plague—

The Falls would've run red with blood.

Nothing mattered, but the tears on her face, and the blood on her lips, that blood diluted with saliva and smeared onto his chest—the tears that he had put there.

Someone had blown holes in his memory, gaps of blackness ringing with the word why (and visions of empty stone vaults), but he wasn't dumb—he wasn't logically stupid, even if he was an idiot. He could put two and two together (never mind that he thought it was five every once in a while). He knew, just as deeply as he had known that terrifying, fading thing about himself, that he had made her cry. That something about him had unleashed that flood again.

That knowledge roiled beneath the surface of his glassy eyes, fueled his slow, drone-like movements, and was the one thing he clung to to keep from drowning: you hurt and it's my fault.

You hurt and that matters.

It was the only thing that mattered—it mattered more than her anger, than his bitter, wounded anger, and it mattered more than whatever wrong he'd done.

It mattered because it was her. It mattered because it was here, and now.

It mattered because the slow trickle of salty water tickled his nose (if for no other reason but please for that—).

She didn't say anything.

He didn't say anything—his words were spent. The rest of the situation was beyond his comprehension, all those little things—

—she made it seem noble—

—they did to them what was once done to me—

—I never stop to think—

—I'm sorry I yelled—

—I'm sorry—

—I'm fucking sorry—

—all those little things rolling beneath the lid of his mind, those erratic wisps of smoky thought flitting out of his grasp, tantalizing because he needed them—he needed them to fix this shit because she had asked him things and he had to answer because it mattered, because it mattered to her, because she had made him see his own evil—

—but he was just so winded, whiskers twitching, eyes vacant as he stared and he didn't know what to do because all he wanted was to fix her damn tears and the blood on her lips but how do you even do that—?

I need to lie down—

Please, just let me go lie down—

Where he had screamed before at her touch, he simply—well—whatever the fuck it was it wasn't a graceful sound, swallowing his own inhalation in surprise, it sounded like a noise something dead might try to make—

—but she was there, all of a sudden, leaving more trails of pinkish red in his violated hair, the entire width of her neck pressed against his, chin pressing down as she held him and—and—and—and I still need to lay the fuck down—but she was holding him, like he had never been held before (I've always been the strong one, I've always been the shield, I've always been the one who holds) with all the unspoken forgiveness that promised that she would still kick his ass for this—

And he couldn't help but think that she was about twenty seconds too late.

He blinked his pale, empty eyes.

They were dry.

He poked his brittle soul.

It was fractured, but hollow.

He needed—wanted—to let it all go—to find some way to just let everything out.

But she had denied him his moment—she had dragged him from the pits of his despair and forced him to stand again. And like always, he had obeyed—he had tried—he had begun to heal in the only way he could, drifting further and further from all that hurt and into a realm of pale nothingness, all in an attempt to be there and answer her and.. and.. and now, when she held him, when she wordlessly asked him to break again,

he found that he felt—

—nothing.

[ @[Roskuld] ]

lord, the demands you're making-
help the monster on two feet
walk him down the hall, repeat
and when he's strong enough to stand alone
you'll notice what big teeth . . .